Credit Cards

Our prior article, 5 Steps To Be Your Own Mogul – Part 1, covers the first three steps to manage your finances like a business. Below we present the final two steps.
4. Forecasting
If you have performed the budget exercise and broken your expenses out into categories, you can start to highlight areas

Can you avoid a New Year’s Day hangover? We’re not referring to the traditional hangover that comes from too much alcohol, but the financial hangover that comes from too many charges on your credit card.
Of course, you can avoid a New Year’s credit hangover – especially with some help. Consider these eleven ways to

Do you have a rewards credit card? If not, now is the perfect time to consider one. The holiday season provides two motivating factors – special rewards offers from credit card issuers and the increased spending necessary to take advantage of those offers.
Many cards offer signup bonuses of hundreds of dollars, or the equivalent

It may seem like you have been paying credit card interest since 3500 BC – but you might be surprised to learn that credit actually dates back to those ancient times.
Historians believe that the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia (in modern-day Iraq) extended credit to farmers in the rough equivalent of a consumer loan. The

Did your credit card limit unexpectedly decrease? If so, would you believe the good economy is the reason why?
Capital One and Discover, two of America’s largest credit card issuers, recently announced a tightening of credit card limits despite the strong economy. Both companies cite risk management as the reason.
While the economy may be

Black Friday arrives on Friday, November 23. Do you plan to join the frenzied early sales with hundreds of your fellow consumers, scour the Internet for online bargains as soon as you’ve digested your Thanksgiving turkey, or wait until the first shopping wave dies down and take your chances a little later in the day?

You’re never too old to learn new things – including better money management practices. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) agrees.
To address financial literacy concerns, the FDIC created the Money Smart teaching program in 2001 to help educators and financial institutions increase consumer understanding of basic financial systems work and how to use them

How do you get credit without a credit score? If you’re new to credit, you don’t have any history for lenders to assess. You’re effectively “credit invisible.”
You can build credit with a secured credit card that reports activity to the credit reporting agencies, but you’ll need to put up a security deposit and

You have several credit cards and a couple of killer rewards programs. Why not put them to good use and charge every purchase that you can?
It’s smart to get the most out of your credit cards, but do so within a budget and with one thought in mind – “Is a credit card the

In September 2017, America learned about the massive data breach at the credit reporting agency Equifax that affected approximately 148 million consumers – one of the largest breaches ever. Identity thieves suddenly acquired a new batch of Social Security numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information.
Consumers were advised to take steps immediately

What’s the benefit of having a credit card? That’s easy – it allows you to buy things with money you don’t currently have. (Of course, that may also be the biggest drawback of having a credit card, if you can’t control your spending.)
All credit cards allow basic purchases, but what specific benefits draw you

Do you use your credit card for most purchases? Are there times you prefer paying with your debit card? Perhaps you still use those funny green paper rectangles with numbers on them?
Cash hasn’t been forgotten, especially for smaller payments. A new study by CreditCards.com shows that 45% of consumers who have rewards credit cards

EMV cards, otherwise known as “chip” cards for the embedded information chips they contain, were touted as the next great advancement in credit card security. According to a new study from Visa, EMV cards have lived up to their promise.
Visa discovered that as of March 2018, counterfeit credit card fraud is down 46% for

We all like getting things for free, especially when the free items or services are valuable. Thanks to legislation that was signed in May 2018, Americans have another free service that they can use as often as they like – applying for a credit freeze. As of September 21, 2018, it no longer costs money

Parents, be careful how you act around your children. Children may listen to what you say, but they’ll be more influenced by what you do.
This maxim also appears to apply to attitudes toward debt. According to a study recently released by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), children have a strong tendency to

By Roshni Chowdhry, head of customer experience at SafetyNet
Of the 17 million Americans currently enrolled in college, 74 percent qualify as what we used to call “nontraditional” students:
One in five is 30 years or older.
About half don’t rely on their parents for money.
One quarter are caring for a

Clerks at most department stores or retailers often ask if you’d like to apply for a store credit card, pleasantly pitching special deals and perks that the credit card provides. Why not accept? How can you go wrong opening another account?
When you’re tempted to accept a store card offer, think of two things –

Miss a credit card payment, and you’ll suffer the consequences. Your credit score will drop significantly, since on-time payments are the number one factor in determining your credit score. You’ll pay late fees and possibly incur a penalty APR. Interest charges will pile up on your unpaid balance.
So why do so many Americans miss

According to the Federal Reserve’s G.19 Consumer Credit report, America’s outstanding revolving debt – mostly credit card debt – was closing in on $1.04 trillion as of June 2018. How will we pay all that money back? An increasing number of Americans may not be able to do so.
ValuePenguin analyst Joe Resendiz calls credit

According to Federal Reserve data, student loan debt has surpassed $1.5 trillion and comprises 11% of America’s collective household debt balance – second only to mortgage debt. More than 44 million Americans have student loan debt, with an average balance of around $33,000.
Given those statistics, you might expect student loans to be the biggest

By Emily Guy Birken
If you are carrying balances on multiple credit cards, it can be confusing to figure out the best way to make your monthly payments to minimize the interest you pay. Should you follow the “debt snowball” method to pay off your credit cards from lowest balance to highest? Or should you

There’s a lot of financial advice out there, from the Wall Street Journal to podcasts to your brother-in-law’s stock tips to “A penny saved is a penny earned.” The infographic above, developed in collaboration with the Common Cents Lab at Duke University, shows six simple steps to get your finances on sound footing.

What’s a sure way to harm your credit score? Being late with payments or missing them completely. On-time payment history is one of the biggest factors in calculating your credit score – and, according to a new survey from CreditCards.com, women are more likely to miss a credit card payment and suffer the credit score

By Sandra Parsons
Credit utilization is a fancy name for how much of your available credit you’ve used. It’s one criterion used by the three major credit bureaus to calculate your credit score. Why do they care? Because your credit utilization is an indicator of the extent to which you rely on credit.
How credit

Credit card issuers generally offer a grace period that allows you time to pay your bill without incurring interest charges on your purchases. The grace period usually lasts two or three weeks from the end of the billing cycle, and will be incorporated into the due date on your bill. Pay your bill in full

Your credit score is one of the primary items that lenders check when they consider loaning you money. A lower score means greater risk, and lenders will charge you a higher interest rate because of that difference – but how much could it cost you over the lifetime of a loan?
According to a new

Have you ever lied for financial gain? The odds are strong that you’ve done it at least once. According to a new study from finder.com, almost 4 out of 5 Americans have admitted to lying for some type of financial gain – and many don’t feel guilty about their lies.
Over 2,000 U.S. adults

Are you having trouble saving money while simultaneously dealing with excessive credit card debt? Mobile savings apps such as Digit and Qapital can help you establish an automatic saving routine – but Digit has introduced a new Digit Pay feature to assist with paying down credit card debt while you save.
According to

Is a bad credit score dragging you down? Almost half of millennials (46%) feel that way, according to a new survey conducted by OppLoans.
It’s an understandable feeling, given that millennials came of age during one of the worst recessions in decades. Many millennials emerged from the recession with delayed careers or lower-than-expected

By Tracy Scott
Have you been ignoring those credit card offers that arrive in your mailbox each week? If so, reconsider slam-dunking them into the circular file… especially if you have credit card debt you’d like to eliminate. Sound counterintuitive? A balance transfer may be the quickest way for you to pay off